


Road to Nowhere

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Approximately canon levels of romance, F/M, Gen, Piloting a space/time ship while intoxicated, Recreational Drug Use, cuddlecore, novelty junk food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 20:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3741928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two idiots chillin' in outer space</p>
            </blockquote>





	Road to Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> For anon, who prompted: Twelve starts smoking. Why? What does Clara think?

He gets in these moods sometimes. Grumpy and petulant and unnecessarily rude. On edge. The two of them, there’s always a feedback loop, whether good or bad, and when he gets like this then she gets like _that_ and then there’s a spiraling cascade of snippy remarks and histrionic flouncing.

So she’s really not all that concerned when he glares at her and turns to stomp dramatically to the TARDIS door, flings it open, and steps out into the cold blankness of outer space. There’s a bubble, after all. Force-field whatsit. He’ll be fine.

She lets a reasonable amount of time pass, then follows him out. The usual lurch in her stomach as the gravity drops, as she finds herself standing on not much of anything. There’s hardly any place she feels as small and vulnerable as she does here. Maybe that’s why he likes it.

The two of them tiny, insignificant, against the vastness of the universe.

“What are you _doing_?” Hands on her hips, teacher-voice engaged. Mostly because it’s fun to talk to him like this, due to the defensive huff it tends to put him in. Petty, yes, but he’s so easy to wind up, it’s hard to resist.

“Playing a rousing game of beach volleyball. Obviously.” What he’s doing is he’s sitting cross-legged on top of the TARDIS and getting high.

She stifles a giggle. It’s a picture, is all. The ridiculous hair-halo and the basically fancy pajama pants and the multiple ratty jumpers, the sloppily-rolled joint, the Deep and Meaningful stare off into the distance. Like he’s an aging rock star, or - probably more accurate - a student who just rolled out of bed and into whatever clothes were on the floor for a crack-of-noon wake and bake.

He does strike her as the kind of person who seldom made it to lectures, back in the day. The truant Time Lord. What was the word he’d used? For the juvenile delinquents he absolutely 100% hadn’t been involved with, how could she even imply such a thing? ‘Toboggan’?

“So I’ve been curious: what changed?” she asks as she clambers up next to him.

“Hmm?”

“In between you leaving as Mr. Sharp-Dressed Minimalist Magician and coming back as, what, this hippie hobo thing.”

“No sense in pretending,” he says. “Not anymore.” He holds the joint out, delicately pinched between thumb and forefinger, eyebrow raised.

She shrugs, and takes it. Forgets how to not cough her lungs to shreds. Hands it back, bleary-eyed. “Damn. Space-weed, huh.”

“I’ll never be anything other than what I am,” he continues. “No matter how many times I’m born again.”

“You’re in the faux-philosophical navel-gazing stage, are you? I’ll be there in a minute, haven’t an ounce of tolerance these days. Just, you know, talk amongst yourselves, don’t wait up.”

“D'you ever get tired of being yourself?” Ignoring her suggestion that he was doing anything other than dispensing the wisdom of the ages.

She half-expects him to pull a turntable from his pocket and put on some ambient future-drone, or whatever stoned aliens listen to that’s, like, so deep man, you gotta hear this. Or unfurl a Dali poster. Maybe this is hitting her harder than she’d care to admit. Out of politeness, she waves at him to pass the joint back. Inhales more carefully this time, smoke spilling from between her lips, and she watches it curl and disperse against the black void.

“I mean. We all want to be someone else, sometimes. I used to want to be a mermaid.” This seems like a reasonable thing to say.

“Mermaid, yeah, makes sense.” He’s very quiet, and he’s sort of drifting gradually sideways, eventually coming to rest against her. Chin propped on her head, arms in not so much a hug as a loose flop around her shoulders, like maybe he thinks he’s accidentally regenerated into a blanket.

He’s a cuddler, apparently, when he’s emphatically high. And, okay, she’s not saying she’ll smoke him up whenever she wants to snuggle, but it is something to keep in mind.

“Sorry,” he says vaguely. “I know I can be a bit. You know. A jerk.”

“Yeah. Same.”

They sit together in a rare companionable silence, watching galaxies go by.

 

“Hey. Here’s a thought,” she says from where she’s half-burrowed inside his coat. “Maybe later we can drop acid and go look at nebulas.”

“'Nebulae’. And that’s a terrible idea. Tried it once, never again. Besides, you’re too much of a control-freak to enjoy anything seriously mind-altering.” He stands up carefully, reaches down to take her hand, and then falls off. They tumble back inside, the TARDIS gently nudging her two idiot children to safety.

There’s always a feedback loop; she giggles, he giggles, they lie on the floor laughing until they forget what it was they were laughing about.

“Maybe I don’t always need to be in control,” she says once she’s finally upright. “Maybe I want to try being someone else. People can change, people have…layers.”

“Oh, no, the faux-philosophical navel-gazing stage. See, I’ve left that already, I’m in the inexplicably-hungry phase now, I can’t help you with your conundrum. Too busy thinking about pastries, sorry.” He doesn’t look very sorry.

“Let me guess. Something revolting and greasy? Deep-fried Mars bar?”

“That’s racist,” he says, pulling a disapproving face. “Some sort of -ist, anyway. Just because I sound Scottish doesn’t mean I want a - actually, no, you’re right, I do want a deep-fried Mars bar.”

 

By the time they make it to Glasgow, fall of 1998, a chip shop where everyone somehow already knows her name, she finds herself conceding the inevitability and essential rightness of battered and fried candy. This is a fixed point, an unalterable moment of history, Clara Oswald in an alleyway licking nougat off her fingers.

They stand together in a rare companionable silence, eating their novelty food, watching cars go by.


End file.
